Interview Haia Aaraj, Recruitment Consultant at Treasurer Search

11-10-2022 | treasuryXL | LinkedIn |

 

Speaking about a rockstar within recruitment for treasury you think about Haia. She started working for Treasurer Search as a Recruitment Consultant at the beginning of this year and celebrated many successes with the team since then.

Haia is a down-to-earth, spontaneous and proactive human being with a hilarious sense of humor! You will be very lucky to work with her as someone who is searching for a next treasury adventure or if your company is in need of a treasurer.

 

 

We wanted to know Haia a bit more and we asked her the following questions. Happy reading!

7 questions for Haia, let’s go!

INTERVIEW

 

1. Treasurer Search is a recruitment business for treasury based in the Netherlands. What is your role within the company? And can you tell us more about your background?

I’m a recruitment consultant at Treasurer Search, so I’m mainly responsible for assignments from our clients to hire treasury professionals (from A to Z), and here we’re talking about Juniors up to executive level assignments. About my background, I have a Bachelor in Sociology and a high Technical Diploma in Management. I started in recruitment since 2016 doing some internships, and officially started as a recruitment assistant at a medical centre, then a company in Dubai where I made my way to the upper level and I left as a Recruitment manager. I moved to the NL and started at Treasurer Search in Feb, 2022.

2. How would you describe Treasurer Search in 3 words?

Well-connected / Transparent / Professional

 

3. What is, in your perception, the biggest benefit for clients and candidates to work with Treasurer Search?

They will be working with Recruiters who are experienced in both recruitment and treasury, so we know who a good cash manager or group treasurer is. At the same time, Treasurer Search provides a transparent recruitment process, no surprises or hidden info, alongside the smoothness in communication.

4. You started at Treasurer Search with zero knowledge about Treasury 8 months ago. Now you are a Rockstar in matching the right candidate with a client. What’s your secret?

In today’s world, everyone can learn whatever they want in no time, the resources available are at a wide range. For me it was mainly reading, attending online courses, and of course, learning from the experts in this field.

 

5. How do you stay informed about the recruiting industry combined with treasury trends?

Attending as much helpful webinars as possible. Also following the stars in both industries is very helpful because you need to stay up-to-date, don’t you?

 

6. What do you think is the most rewarding aspect of being a treasury recruiter?

Being a treasury recruiter widen your aspects of how the financial management works. You forget about traditional roles in business finance and you learn treasury is way more than the basics that the public knows.

 

7. What are you most proud of in your career at Treasurer Search so far?

When I started at Treasurer Search I was new to the country, and the treasury. This is where my colleagues played the big part and helped a lot through time. Now I’ve integrated well in the society as well as learned a lot about treasury. Mainly, I’m proud of my colleagues who played an essential part in this big movement for me.

 

Want to connect with Haia? Click here

 

Thanks for reading!

 

 

Kendra Keydeniers

Director Community & Partners, treasuryXL

Group Treasurers’ Exchange | Designed for Group Treasurers, by Group Treasurers

06-10-2022 | IQPC Exchange | treasuryXL | LinkedIn |



EUROPE’S PREMIER INVITATION-ONLY EVENT FOR GROUP TREASURERS

 

At the 10th annual Group Treasurers’ Exchange, 60 Group Treasurers, Directors and Heads of Treasury will be coming to Berlin on November 15-16 to discuss how innovating the treasury function will mitigate risk and bolster profitability.

Designed for Group Treasurers, by Group Treasurers, the GT Exchange Europe 2022 offers a unique and exclusive format specifically tailored to unpack the issues that are most relevant. This invitation-only meeting is exclusively attended by a select group of pre-qualified senior treasurers responsible for creating an efficient and innovative treasury function. Attendees will benefit from an experience packed with networking with likeminded peers navigating the same industry challenges in a relaxed, consultative, and friendly environment.

The Exchange is attended by senior strategic leaders and decision-makers from major Treasury departments across Europe. Every attendee is personally invited and registered to ensure the right level of seniority and relevance to the event’s key themes.

Group Treasurers, Directors and Heads of Treasury can capitalise on a closed-door event with no press, full of one-to-one meetings, intimate breakout sessions, think tanks, roundtable discussions & more!

This innovative two-day event will cover key challenges facing an innovative treasury function, with expert speakers attending from a variety of top companies, including:

  • Roche
  • General Mills
  • C&A
  • SVP Worldwide
  • Galeria
  • Orange
  • Axpo Group

Topics discussed at the 2022 Exchange include:

  • Payments, Liquidity Management, Taxation and Regulation
  • Future of the Treasury Department
  • Promoting Innovation and Risk
  • Prioritising ESG Initiatives
  • Relationship Management
  • Digitalisation and Financial Efficiency
  • Cash Forecasting
  • Cost Elimination and Fraud Prevention
  • Value Creation Through Liquidity Strategy
  • Cross-Department Collaboration
  • New Technologies for the Treasury Department

 

If you’re a qualifying attendee and want to attend the #GTEU Exchange, request an invitation here

 

REGISTER YOUR INTEREST

 

 

 

5 Steps to Automate (and Optimize) Your FX Risk Management Program

03-10-2022 | treasuryXL | Kyriba | LinkedIn |

Companies of all sizes and industries with FX exposures are being impacted by global trade complexities. New dynamics are putting CFOs and treasurers’ FX strategies and their ability to explain results to the test. Automating an FX management program provides numerous advantages. Diminishing the need for manual involvement frees corporate risk, treasury, finance, and accounting teams from sourcing information manually from multiple systems, compiling and uploading it into spreadsheets and finally attempting to put all of this into a management report that is timely.

By Brian Blihovde
 Senior Director, Product Marketing

Source

Companies of all sizes and industries with foreign currency exposures are being impacted by a number of global trade complexities. For many, supply chain disruptions, interest rate, and price index increases are taking a toll on profitability. For many others, the impact from increased foreign currency headwinds is becoming the glaring reality unveiling weaknesses in FX risk management programs. CFOs are having a more challenging time predicting income statement impacts in both directions: favorable and adverse; neither direction is good, particularly for publicly traded enterprises. New dynamics are putting CFOs and treasurers’ FX strategies and the ability to explain results, to the test. Using leading practices supported by leading solutions helps CFOs and finance leaders overcome these challenges of reliance upon manual, spreadsheet-based workflows.

Whether your organization is starting, advancing, or reassessing your individual FX risk programs, there are levels of benefits, value and success metrics tied to how exposed and how uncertain your levels of fx risk management are. For instance, are you able to identify exposures, aggregate and categorize them? Are those balances generated from automated journal entries or is there a manual component? Across your systems, how well are market exchange rates used and applied across the ERP, GL, procurement, billing, or FP&A modules? How often? Finally, and probably one of the most overlooked attributes, how long does it take and the number of staff who participate in attempting to gain access to even a partial picture of your FX risk? How efficient is the draw of FX data? Ultimately much effort is put into converting that data into information and what do the lags in the timeliness of the information you, as CFO are using to make decisions? The answer lies in a company’s ability to invest in technology and process transformation that can stem from that investment.

Automating the FX Management Process

Diminishing the need for manual involvement or onerous workarounds, frees corporate risk, treasury, finance and accounting teams from sourcing information manually from multiple systems, compiling and uploading into spreadsheets and finally attempting to put all of this into a management report that is timely. The giving them more time to analyze information, track exposure trends and proactively seek out other opportunities to eliminate risk. Ultimately, automation transforms how treasury professionals are perceived within an organization, allowing them to be seen as a key resource in strategic planning. The implementation of an FX management program provides numerous advantages, but the three high-level areas for the entire finance organization and business divisions exist:

  1. A complete picture – Gain a clear understanding of how currency is impacting the entire organization and create reports to analyze exposures in real time
  2. Maximum control of the business – Gain confidence in data quality and exposure accuracy to be able to detect underlying details that are not obvious in manual spreadsheet environments
  3. Informed business decisions – Incorporate historical business cycles, trends and the business insights gained from having detailed data to make better hedging decisions and drive better FX management results
  4. Growth and Scalability / Integrating M&A – business expansion, in the form of acquiring new business units and attempting to run consolidations on them is hard enough. Automation through leading technology can help take advantage of acquisitions and eliminate delays in synchronization from outlier processes or legacy mismatches in risk policy

FX Risk Management Automation: Implications for your Organization

The use of technology does not merely indicate that the application of technology will result in system integration and process automation. Yes, this is one of the starting blocks of taking good processes and creating time-saving opportunities to generate better decision-making with cost-savings optimization. One focus of FX Hedge Management optimization will involve operational cost savings, but another focus should be on taking more of a role in assessing overall strategic success of your hedging through currency pair correlated VaR analyses and scenario analyses. Having more analytical power from technology automation can speed access to better information on your overall cost of hedging foreign currency risk.

Evaluating your FX Risk Program Operations

When evaluating your FX management programs, organizations should consider which of the following aspects of their FX workflow requires better efficiency and effectiveness:

  • Data collection automation can eliminate manual time spent on the collection of exposure data and enable teams make better decisions based on the most accurate information
  • Calculation and analysis of exposures automatically determines the impacts of rate changes, identify impacts that surpass materiality thresholds, and pinpoint accounting or posting issues
  • Hedging and trade preparation processes are pre-proposed from exposure information to ensure corporate decision strategy or policy application and trades are automatically prepared for submission following hedge approval
  • Compliance automation enables the standardization of compliance practices and ensures that documentation contains historical audit trails for reporting purposes
  • End-to-end workflow automation eliminates manual processes and human error for an improvement in both efficiency and security

Expanding Analytical Capabilities

Technology solutions should undergo assessment for various capabilities that are part of leading analytical aspects of the FX Risk program. For instance, portfolio VaR analyses can help companies create portfolio views or dive into targeted gross/net exposures while considering the cost of a hedge across specific currency pairs, portfolios. Automation for running simulations helps determine top hedging scenarios that your risk managers can analyze to determine what currency pairs to hedge and what the resulting net exposure and portfolio value at risk will be. Access to automated dashboards and FX business intelligence gives your treasury and finance leaders the ability to Identify strategies to reduce costs and improve the efficiency of your exposure management and hedging programs across specific parameters and filters. If you cannot choose various exposures, legal entity slices, or currency selections, you are not optimally running an automated or efficient FX program. Finally, FX trade desk workflow automation and confirmation capabilities for the back-office is often under-estimated as entering and executing FX trades is part of operational or physical workflows attributed to the program. However, the implications to generating entries, integration to trading or confirmation platforms makes this an integral part of FX Risk processes.

5 Steps to Create an FX Automation Roadmap

The goal is the create a plan and roadmap to optimize and transform the way your finance organization collects, analyzes, aggregates, and mitigates risk from foreign currency exposures. One suggested approach is to work with FX Advisors to help you understand where you are and how to get there. As always, having a plan, success measures tied back to value drivers helps programs succeed.

FX Improvement Steps Objectives, Guidance
1.
Identify Systems, Sources of Exposures
Often, there are a wide array and extensive network of foreign currency denominated transactions; and extremely unlikely to be creating offsets that could qualify as natural hedges. The inventory of systems in an extensive matrix is a very good starting point.
2.
Assess Integrity of your FX data, GL accounts, & source postings
Once the system landscape is understood, how well are the controls on your ERPs, ancillary systems and manual transactions coming from sub-ledgers? Are your financial statements subject to shifts from erroneous transactional impacts?
3.
Select and deploy technology targeting automation
Consolidating technology platforms into one risk management platform, allows finance organizations to save significant, material cost amounts and increase profitability from merely being accurate in their hedging activities. Fully automating your FX management program with technology, which entails modernizing data collection, exposure consolidation, calculation and analysis, and hedging recommendations, ensures an organization is operating in step with current FX best practices.
4.
Target a full, end to end solution
Your technology solution should provide for:
  • direct ERP data extraction and aggregation
  • exposure and risk analysis generation
  • automated risk transfer
  • VaR correlation analytics and scenario analyses
  • trade execution connectivity to banking portals and trading platforms using state-of-the-art, highly secure SaaS solutions
5.
Customizable, Flexible Business Intelligence
Reporting and dashboards create relevant and valued analytics at your fingertips with real-time speed and automation.

Kyriba’s FX Advisory Services professionals give you leading practice advice and guidance in identifying, assessing, measuring, and implementing positive FX Risk Management results across your people, processes and systems. Learn how to improve and transform your FX Risk Management profile into more predictable and effective hedging results

Learn more about Kyriba’s leading FX Risk Management solution and our FX Advisory Team today. Reach out to our team of FX Risk Management professionals at: [email protected]

Click here to view all blogs by Kyriba

LIVE SESSION | My Treasury Career Development & How the Register Treasurer education contributed

29-09-2022  treasuryXL | Treasurer Search | LinkedIn

 

Are you thinking about how you can shape your treasury career and in need for inspiration? There are plenty of education opportunities, but in what education will you invest?

 

 

You are invited to join our next Live Session. Registration is Now Open for:

𝐌𝐲 𝐭𝐫𝐞𝐚𝐬𝐮𝐫𝐲 𝐜𝐚𝐫𝐞𝐞𝐫 𝐝𝐞𝐯𝐞𝐥𝐨𝐩𝐦𝐞𝐧𝐭 & 𝐇𝐨𝐰 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐑𝐞𝐠𝐢𝐬𝐭𝐞𝐫 𝐓𝐫𝐞𝐚𝐬𝐮𝐫𝐞𝐫 𝐄𝐝𝐮𝐜𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧 𝐂𝐨𝐧𝐭𝐫𝐢𝐛𝐮𝐭𝐞𝐝

There is no standard career path for treasurers but one can learn from the choices and developments of the successful ones.

In this webinar two graduated Register Treasurers will share their stories:

  • 🌟 Jurgen Wessel RT is interim Head of Treasury of SHV and has experience in a variety of international companies at HQ and treasury hub level.
  • 🌟 Frank van der Hoeven RT van der Hoeven used to be a banker, moved to the corporate side and currently is Treasury Manager at IMCD, well-known for many successful acquisition and integration processes.

They will tell you about how they moved between various stations and will pay special attention to the added value of their post academic degree: The Treasury Management and Corporate Finance programme (RT Programme) at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam (VU Amsterdam).

 

REGISTER HERE

 

Everyone is welcome to this webinar. This webinar is extra relevant for those who consider joining the RT programme.

🌟Moderator: Pieter de Kiewit of Treasurer Search

🌟Duration: 45 minutes

 

We can’t wait to welcome you next week!

Best regards,

 

 

Kendra Keydeniers

Director, Community & Partners

 

 

 

 

What is Pricing Risk (FX Risk) and how to deal with it?

22-09-2022 | Harry Mills | treasuryXL | LinkedIn

Also known as pre-transaction risk, pricing risk occurs between a transaction being priced and agreed upon. It materialises when exchange rates change after a quote has been delivered, either impacting the sales margin or incurring a re-price. treasuryXL expert Harry Mills, founder & CEO of CEO Oku Markets, will explain to us what Pricing Risk is all about, and how to deal with it.

By Harry Mills

Source

Who experiences pricing risk?

Businesses experience pricing risk to a greater or lesser extent depending on the nature of their business, their marketplace, and their sales and purchasing cycles. We find it helpful to consider the following initial points when assessing pricing risk:

  1. Is the transaction FX-denominated, influenced, or relatively insensitive?
  2. What is the timeline between quoting and agreement?
  3. What impact would a +/- 5% or 10% FX move have on margins?

A transaction is “FX-denominated” when it is in a currency other than the firm’s functional currency. An example is a UK business providing a quote to an Irish business for an export sale denominated in euros (instead of GBP).

How much influence? An example…

You’ll likely have an intuitive idea of the level of influence that fluctuations in FX rates have on your transactions, but consider a UK company that designs and builds high-end bespoke summer houses (why not?):

  • The company imports unfinished timber and metal fixings priced in dollars, and sources glass and other furnishings and materials from within the UK
  • The per-unit cost of production will be affected by movements in the GBPUSD exchange rate because timber is a major cost
  • But the basket of production costs also includes the UK-sourced materials, shipping, labour (design and build), amongst others (warehousing, storage etc.)
  • So we can see that a 5% drop in GBPUSD wouldn’t result in a 5% increase in production costs – understanding this relationship and ratio is critical

“Businesses should understand the precise impact of currency fluctuations on their costs and/or revenues to determine their FX sensitivity, especially concerning pricing risk”

Harry Mills, Founder & CEO Oku Markets

One-Size doesn’t fit all

Getting to grips with pricing risk can be fairly straightforward for FX-denominated transactions with a straight-through and linear FX impact on the price, but most businesses have a more complex setup.

Many businesses are converting from a just-in-time to a just-in-case stock strategy. which can bring complexity and may add to pricing risk. It’s our view, here at Oku Markets, that there is no one-size-fits-all approach for currency management, so here’s a few areas to think about:

  • Stock cycle and costing method
  • Pricing strategy and flexibility
  • FX price sensitivity (as detailed above)
  • The competitive environment and market practices

Pricing risk can impact procurement and sales, although we mostly think about the pricing that we are delivering. What about the pricing we receive, as customers? It’s not uncommon for Chinese exporters to add a large buffer to their prices to factor in fluctuations and depreciation in the USDCNY exchange rate. Read more about China and the yuan.

So it’s worth considering and asking your suppliers and international partners about how they manage FX – is there an opportunity for increased transparency and better terms by tackling the problem together?

FX Risk Map

It might be helpful to visualise the lifecycle of a transaction to identify when currency risk occurs. Again, there is no one-size template for this – every business’ FX Risk Map will look a little different, but here’s a basic setup to get started with:

  • Pricing Risk: the FX risk between quote and agreement
  • Transaction Risk: the FX risk between agreement and settlement
  • Translation Risk: the FX risk between accounting (PO/invoice) and settlement
FX Risk Map copy-cwoah

Dealing with Pricing Risk

Three ways you can reduce pricing risk and deliver more consistent results are:

  1. Include a quote expiry date – limiting the time reduces risk
  2. Add an FX buffer to the price – 5% is typical for short periods
  3. Build an FX clause into the quote – transparency means no surprises

The most appropriate route or combination of mitigating actions is unique to each business. An online travel company delivering live holiday prices will require higher frequency updates to FX rates and a tighter quote expiry date and FX buffer when compared to a company providing quotes for custom-designed summer houses.

When it comes to an FX buffer, we suggest considering the volatility of the currency pair and adjusting for the relevant quote period.

Let us help you quantify your FX risk

Quantifying currency exposure requires thought and specialist skills and expertise. Most FX brokers lack the capabilities to do this properly, resorting instead to emotionally-charged deal-making which can result in poor outcomes for clients.

We’re proud to work transparently with our clients, and we work hard to break the asymmetry of knowledge and information in the FX market.

You can contact us for a review of your currency processes and for our guidance and suggestions at [email protected] or 0203 838 0250.

Thanks for reading 👋

 

Harry Mills, Founder at Oku Markets

Where did the treasury applicants go? | By Pieter de Kiewit

19-09-2022  treasuryXL | Pieter de Kiewit | Treasurer Search  LinkedIn

As treasury recruiters, we should know enough about corporate treasury to do intakes and screen candidates. Also, we should know the latest about what’s happening in the field of recruitment and so we read the publications of Geert-Jan Waasdorp of The Intelligence Group. I would like to share his latest, very interesting article and build the treasury connection.

By Pieter de Kiewit

Labour market pressures are not equally distributed among all employers.

I left a link if you want to read the full article but this is roughly what he says. There is a huge growth in people working since before covid. In parallel, there is a huge decline in active applicants. This pressure in the labour market is not evenly distributed among all employers. The ones that can find new employees can do so because of a strong employer brand and increased investments in own or external recruitment. Also, they are willing to decide quick and offer a better package.

So what does this mean if we project these findings on the corporate treasury labour market? My personal observation is that treasury staff is, on average, less driven by the company brand and more by the job content than candidates from other job types. We learned this working for clients like Tesla and Nike. Employer branding specifically towards treasurers would also be hard, I cannot envision a corporate recruiter promoting his manufacturing company at Eurofinance.

How to adapt?

The obvious low-hanging fruit is that the hiring manager, already at the start of the process, has to organise and choose a mindset in the following: being able to decide quickly, from fewer candidates than before, and offering more than the old standard. Even highly skilled recruiters sometimes underestimate these aspects over time.

The judgement if the internal recruitment team is equipped to tackle the search or whether an external one should do the job – we, Treasurer Search – I will not elaborate on here. What I do want to mention is another obvious source that can be opened. For some of us that are considered a paradigm shift: bringing treasury talent in from abroad, from within the EU or even sponsoring a work permit. I am aware that some of us consider this topic highly political. What I can tell, both from our own organisation, as well as from successful placements with our clients, that this can be a very successful solution. In the Dutch labour market already the majority of candidates placed by us is non-Dutch. This is not a plea to open the borders and not be critical. Regretfully we have examples where this solution did not lead to success as coming to The Netherlands can be hard for the new employee. But also locally found candidates can fail in their new job.

My conclusion is that indeed, the world is different, as is the labour market. And given current demographic developments I do not expect a shift back. Luckily there are solutions but we will have to accept the consequences and cannot lean back. Those that do will shrink and go extinct.

Good luck in your search,

Pieter

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Thanks for reading!

Pieter de Kiewit

Quickly refresh your treasury knowledge? Download our eBook: What is Treasury?

08-09-2022 | treasuryXL | LinkedIn |

Hello Treasurers, CFO’s, Cash Managers, Controllers and other Finance addicts, how do you quickly refresh your treasury knowledge? Or how do you explain ‘What Treasury is’ to family and friends? Well, there is a simple solution for it. Download our eBook: What is Treasury? 

This eBook compiled by treasury describers all aspects of the treasury function. This comprehensive book covers relevant topics such as Treasury, Corporate Finance, Cash Management, Risk Management, Working Capital Management.

This eBook was prepared by treasuryXL based on the most useful best practices offered by Treasury professionals throughout the previous years. We compiled the most crucial information for you and wrote clear, concise articles about the key topics in the World of Treasury.

We took a deeper dive into each of the above-mentioned treasury functions and highlight:

  • The purpose of each named Treasury function (What is?)
  • What specialists do
  • Examples of Activities
  • Summary of Frequently Asked Questions and answers
  • Conclusion

How to receive the eBook ‘What is Treasury’ for Free?

We simply giveaway two presents for you! By signing up for our newsletter you will automatically receive the following in your inbox:

  1. On Fridays, our Coffee Break weekly newsletter will land in your inbox. In this weekly newsletter, we will highlight the whole week full of the latest treasury news within our community.
  2. The 41 pages eBook, What is Treasury?
Subscribe and Download

 

Subscribe, Join, Download and Relax.

Welcome to our community and have fun reading!

 

 

Kendra Keydeniers

Director, Community & Partners at treasuryXL

 

 

 

 

Corporate Treasury Data Insights Refinitiv

07-09-2022 | treasuryXL | Refinitiv | LinkedIn |

 

The USDCNY historical volatility, the expert webinar on Inflation Growth & Markets, Refinitiv Corporate Treasury Newsbeat and much more. All summarised in the new Corporate Data Insights by Refinitiv.

Chart of the Month

Chart of the month

1M and 3M USDCNY historical volatility 

 

Our Chart of the Month shows 1-month volatility (in orange) and 3-month volatility (in green) for the USDCNY currency pair. It clearly demonstrates huge implications for those hedging CNY exposures.
The combination of USD rate tightening and Chinese rate easing since the start of the year – reflecting a weakening Chinese economy and Covid-19 restrictions – has meant a stronger USD, a sell-off of Chinese bonds, and significantly elevated USDCNY volatility.
Ahead of the November US mid-term elections, commentators are watching to see if Biden’s inflation imperative might outweigh the US response to China’s actions towards Taiwan. Our news partner, Reuters, unpacks this conundrum in more detail.


The Biden administration has been forced to recalibrate their thinking on whether to scrap some tariffs or potentially impose others on Beijing, according to sources familiar with the deliberations.
It has considered a combination of eliminating some tariffs, potential additional tariffs, and expanding a list of tariff exclusions to aid U.S. companies that can only get certain supplies from China.
Additional tariffs would make Chinese imports more expensive for U.S. companies, and subsequently makes products more costly for consumers. However, bringing inflation down is a major goal for Biden ahead of the November mid-term elections.
Politically there is a delicate path to tread, but recent market dynamics may suit US policy makers.

[Webinar] Inflation, Growth and Markets: Hear from the Experts |

Economies around the world are enduring inflationary pressures not experienced in decades. Rising cos

ts triggered by supply chain interruptions and wage demands as economies roared back to life post-COVID were compounded in February by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, disrupting crucial commodity supplies. Join a panel of expert Reuters editors to discuss the issues and hear from Refinitiv’s Director of Macro and Economics on how to use Workspace and Eikon product enhancements.

How are digital assets used to evade sanctions?
There is a growing concern that criminal networks may seek to circumvent global sanctions through the use of cryptocurrency. Refinitiv is working on promoting a more coordinated global response to financial crime, focusing on protecting the digital asset space. How can we respond to the challenge? >
Everything flows: Green equity funds go red for the first time since COVID meltdown

After a volatile start to July, the FTSE 100 crept up a touch less than 250 points over the month, with other equity markets globally turning upwards in a similar fashion from late June recent lows. At the same time, the yield on the benchmark 10-year gilt was squeezed by about 90 basis points. Fund flows, however, do not reflect this—at least at the most broad-brush asset class level, with redemptions excluding money market vehicles running to £7.9bn.  Find out more about recent asset flow trends >

Breakingviews: D.C. turf war opens crypto regulatory arbitrage 

 

Cryptocurrency ventures can divide and conquer Washington’s regulatory fiefdoms. The U.S. Federal Reserve staked out its turf this week, telling lenders to notify it if they offer services for bitcoin and its ilk. Other agencies are also wrestling to oversee the $1 trillion market. The scrap provides an opportunity for some industry participants, but it hurts token owners. Read on >

Deep U.S. curve inversion hastens the recession it predicts 

An inverted U.S. Treasury yield curve almost always heralds recession, but the yawning gap between high short-term funding costs and falling long-term borrowing rates may accelerate the economic downturn it presages. Reuters columnist Jamie McGeever looks at the potential impact of an inverted U.S. treasury yield curve.

Refinitiv Corporate Treasury Newsbeat

Refinitiv issues consultation on Tokyo Swap Rate benchmarks |  Refinitiv announced the publication of a consultation paper regarding the Tokyo Swap Rate benchmarks. Refinitiv administers Tokyo Swap Rate, a Japanese yen (JPY) interest rate swap (IRS) benchmark family, which is used in the valuation of swaptions, CMS, structured loans and notes, FRNs and private finance initiatives. Read more here >
Bulgarian Stock Exchange powers sustainability index with Refinitiv ESG metrics |  The Bulgarian Stock Exchange (BSE) announced it has adopted Refinitiv’s Environment, Social and Governance (ESG) metrics to power its sustainability index set to be launched end of 2022 Read more here >
Refinitiv to launch forward looking term rate versions of ARRC recommended fallback rates this September to facilitate industry transition from USD LIBOR |  Refinitiv announces that it intends to launch forward looking term rate versions of its ARRC recommended fallback rates – USD IBOR Cash Fallbacks – in September 2022. This follows the Alternative Reference Rates Committee’s (ARRC) March 2021 announcement that it had selected Refinitiv to publish its recommended fallback rates for cash products and Refinitiv’s November 2021 announcement that it had released production fallback rates based upon various SOFR conventions.  Read more here >
For more data-driven insights in your Inbox, subscribe to the Refinitiv Perspectives weekly newsletter.

Image promoting the Corporate Treasury Data Insights newsletter. Subscribe Now!

 

RECAP | Cash and Treasury Management Event Copenhagen | By Pieter de Kiewit

06-09-2022 | cashandtreasury.dk | treasuryXL | Pieter de Kiewit | LinkedIn

 

Last week, Pieter de Kiewit was Chairman of the Cash & Treasury Management Conference in Copenhagen. Pieter decided to take the effort to share his experience with you.

 

By Pieter de Kiewit, Chairman of the event

Corporate treasury events come in many shapes and sizes. Earlier this year, I reported on my visit to Mannheim, in a few weeks you can expect a blog about Vienna, in this blog more about Copenhagen. I can already tell you that I liked the format and set-up of this event.

Corporate treasury markets will always be very niche. The event organiser, Insight Events, targeted a mainly Danish-Scandinavian audience. The sessions were all in English and the venue was the beautiful Hotel D’Angleterre in the heart of Copenhagen. It was also a conscious choice to keep the audience small, just under 150 and of high calibre: almost all treasurers, most of them quite senior and well informed. The consequence of this choice is also that there were no parallel sessions, all sessions were attended by the entire audience. During the break one could meet the various treasury service and product providers, including treasuryXL partner Nomentia.

Last year, I was asked to present on “how to get hired for your next treasury position” and had some questions during other sessions. Based on the bond we built, I was asked to be moderator/chairman of this year’s event. I thought it was a great gig, if it was appreciated, you just have to ask others.


The programme consisted of presentations and panel discussions led by Nordea. I was impressed by the level of quality offered. There were two macro-economic presentations, one by the Chief Economist of Nordea, a well-known TV personality in Denmark and the other by a senior director of EKF, the Danish export credit agency. Both gentlemen brought very thorough interesting insights but, given the current global developments, also a gloomy and dark future.

Another highlight was the input on ESG financing where treasurers and senior sustainability experts together informed the audience about the reality of this type of funding making in, at least for me, an inspiring way. In a cleverly constructed format, credit rating and Basel IV developments were linked in a session with the most questions from the audience.

In other, more traditional but also essential and informative sessions, building treasury teams, mergers and career development were on the agenda. And the non-treasury topic was brought up in a very entertaining way about a hacked company that does not want to pay a ransom. Relevant not only for treasurers and definitely food for thought.

Looking back, I see a very successful and high quality event. On a personal note, I always enjoy the international in my work. Me as a Dutchman, extrovert, direct and sometimes unintentionally rude, communicating with civilised, reserved Scandinavians who do not ask too many questions hopefully did not result in not being invited for next year. We shall see…..

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Thanks for reading!

Pieter de Kiewit

When Should You Start a Hedge Program?

23-08-2022 | treasuryXL | GTreasury | LinkedIn |

A popular Chinese proverb says “the best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago. The second-best time is now.” This is equally true in the world of hedging.

Source: Hedge Trackers, a GTreasury Company

We’ve seen volatility in currency markets, with the EUR falling 9 percent between Labor Day and Thanksgiving. We’ve seen volatility in commodities, with some commodity prices doubling and tripling and oil prices approaching 10-year highs. And short-term interest rates may quadruple in a year.

Companies that have well-run hedge programs have time to prepare and adjust to these forces. But what if you’ve been waiting for “the best time” or “the right time” to hedge?

Two years ago, we were surprised with a global pandemic – when everything settles down, will it be a good time to start a hedge program? Before we even have a chance to assimilate that, we are now faced with war in Europe. Sanctions, which will almost certainly be followed by more sanctions and more volatility, and which will be followed by what? Are you feeling like you’ve missed the opportunity to start hedging?

It’s never too late to set up a hedge program.

Now, just like last week, last year, and five years ago, the steps are the same.

  • Determine what your objective is. As our own Helen Kane says, “I believe that most hedge programs should take a deep breath, step back and determine what is really the objective…. Are they trying to protect margins? Are they trying to lock in budgeted earnings? Are they smoothing the year-over-year impact of currency into their financials?”
  • Once you know your objective, identify and quantify your exposures. Investigate the start of the exposure (often not easy to identify) and its end. The answers will be different depending on your hedge objective, and that’s why it’s critical to get that objective determined first. It is expected that you would have different objectives for different exposures.
  • You’re ready to start working on your policy, detailing what exposures will be managed with what strategies/derivatives over what time frame. You may want to consider some flexibility in the policy to systematically take advantage (or not), with clear guidelines generational rate movements – allowing more or less (but not zero) hedging in those times when rates hit 5- or 10-year highs or lows. This provides a framework to contemplate those things that we thought were so rare that we wouldn’t see them in our lifetime. Remember those days?
  • There are other documents that will be necessary. If not addressed directly in your policy, you’ll want a guideline for accounting and an appropriate control structure. You’ll also need to make sure that inception documentation supporting any special hedge accounting is compliant.
  • You’ll need to set up a process for collecting exposures at different stages (anticipated, recognized, impacting earnings, settled).
  • Make sure that you have a good working relationship and legal framework (ISDA) with your counterparties and that you set up a good process for trading and competitive bidding.
  • Of course, trade management and special hedge accounting should not be left to spreadsheets. We’d be happy to introduce you to CapellaFX, which not only is a trade repository but also accumulates your exposure data (existing and anticipated), applies hedge decisions, designates and documents exposures, drives your hedge accounting and provides effectiveness tests. Most importantly, it is user-friendly for both Treasury and Accounting and doesn’t require a derivative specialist to use or implement.

Conclusion

Does all of this seem daunting? It doesn’t have to be. Hedge Trackers can help you with every step. We have the people and the systems to assist your team, or you can offload some or all of the process to us.

Returning to our original question on the best time to plant the tree – or start a hedging program. If you haven’t already done so, recall that the next best time to start is right now.